Berlin, James. Rhetoric and Reality: Writing Instruction in American Colleges, 1900-1985 (1987)
Pedagogical, philosophical, professional
Explores the noetic fields of the rhetorics of the 19th century
A rhetoric is always a social invention – with four elements interacting:
Reality
Writer/speaker
Audience
Language
–a noetic field is an epistemological system defining:
what can and cannot be known,
the nature of the knower,
the nature of the relationships among the knower, the known, and the audience
the nature of language
Rhetorical schemes differ in the way each element is defined as well as the conception of the relation of the elements to each other
19thcentury displays 3 distinct rhetorical systems – each based on noetic field
classical
defines the real as rational
universe governed by rules of reason and human mind governed by same rules
knowledge is found in formalization of those rules – dialectic and syllogism
for Aristotle – less certain areas of human concern is the realm of rhetoric
rhetoric as a method for arriving at truth as compelling as logic for dialectic (not unlike Perelman)
discovery of available means of persuasion is the aim of rhetoric
invention is main concern
noetic filed – world is made of finite set of truths, logically arranged and discovered, knower attempts to act in conformance with reales of reason, in communicating in rhetorical realm, speaker realizes pathos and ethos are necessary.
Language is sign system for purposes of communication
Oral
Overthrow with English rule and with the appeal of Scottish Common Sense Realism
psychological/epistemological
reality in 2 realms – spiritual and material
discrete mental faculties to apprehend each
reality is discovered through observation, use of the senses and faculties without regard for received wisdom – induction is method of securing truth
truth is extralinguistic
appeal to the faculties of the auditor – reproduce original experience – be vivid
Rhetoric based on SCSR widens to include the study of all discourse – not just persuasion
Campbell’s rhetoric expands scope of rhetoric – how discourse achieves its affects
Blair’s – how aesthetics/lit influence writing
Shift from Aristotle’s concern for speaking truth to concern for gaining effect
Campbell’s rhetoric emphasizes induction—the use of the faculties for direct observation
Invention is take out of rhetoric and relegated to methodology of the discipline involved – it becomes simple a process of managing and adapting the argument to affect an audience in a the desired way (adaptation = eloquence)
Knowledge of things is central for Campbell
Ethical appeal is ignored
Pathetic/emotional appeal is important because it secures the assent of the will (conviction separate from persuasion)
Emotional, however, becomes an element of style – perspicuity, energy, vivacity
Rhetoric primarily emotional – no persuasion without moving the audience -- excite desire or passion in hearers and satisfy judgment that there is connection between the action and satisfaction of passion that has been excited.
Blair based on same noetic field as Campbell, but emphasizes style
If students learn to appreciate literature, to master principles of lit crit, he will learn to write
Reading leads to appreciation, virtue, and good writing
Metaphor joined for pleasure (not truth)
Blair specifically interested in writing – provides model for using lit to teach writing
Whately’s description of how the composing process is to be taught is most pervasive feature of his rhetoric”
Assist student in finding subject – engaging to student
State the proposition to be maintained (thesis)
Proposition not too wide
Outline to give coherence to the composition – proportion and clear and easy arrangement
Work up informal essay
Correctness of language
Teacher points out any faults and has student rewrite
Romantic
Private, personal discovery and truth
Emerson
Current Traditional –
Result of change in college population, industrialization, commitment to serving all citizens, prepare students for work in this life, serve needs of business and industry
Creation of departments – persuasion to speech, aesthetics to literature, composition to rhetoric
CT is the triumph of the scientific and technical world
Rhetoric’s sole appeal is to understanding and reason through exposition and argument (not persuasion which is appeal to will through emotion)
Set for what is discovered – exposition
Writer’s duty to rid himself of trappings of culture; objective, detached in observing experience
Invention not necessary – find language that corresponds to the observed phenomena – invention is management and the managing corresponds to forms of discourse:
Description
Narration
Exposition
Argument
Invention as office of presenting the message so as to affect the reader in the manner intended (forms started with Campbell, formalized by Bain)
Audience is static and passive
Arrangement – managerial invention makes this central
Focus on paragraph (Bain)
Principles of unity, coherence, and emphasis
Newton Scott alternative voice
Emerson and American Pragmatism as influences
Consciously formulating alternative to Current Traditionalists
Reality is a social construction emerging from dialectical interplay of individuals using language in order to survive in a world bounded by the material
Reality is neither exclusively internal nor external – instead it is the result of interaction between experience of external and what the perceiver brings to the experience.
Relations the bring about reality also include the social – contact
Language is not just a sign system – it is constitutive of reality – the condition of thought
Thought and language are one
Students bring inherent ability to use language
Attacks insistence on Cartesian rationality – what is needed is the dialectical interplay – organizing principles not exclusively scientific or rational, but products of social environment
Rhetoric must be based on holistic response, involving the total person, the ethical and aesthetic as well as rational
CT governed by metaphor/image of machine, Scott’s metaphor is the plant – meaning grows with a variety of mental operations – truth grows out of the rhetorical act
Present (1984)
CT challenged in 1960’s by three approaches attempting to establish a noetic field that serves as an alternative to CT
Classical (Corbett)
Comprehensive rhetoric, reminder of rich possibilities
Restore holistic response to experience
Include ethical and aesthetic considerations
Returns notion of probability – persuasion again at center of discourse
Must consider audience as complex and motivated by emotion and reason
Invention, arrangement, and style
Interaction between writer and audience
Truth is not an original creation but making it prevail is the first concern of the writer – must consider human values in composing
Halloran – restore civic, political context
Expressionist
Restore individuals to own identities
Individual, private struggle to arrive at truth
Stress that truth is conceived as a result of private vision that must be constantly consulted in writing
Unique voice
New rhetoric (epistemic)
Regard rhetoric as epistemic, as a means of arriving at truth and place language at center of truth seeking
Truth is dynamic and dialectical, result of process of interaction of opposing elements
Truth is a product of the relation between writer, audience, reality, and language
Truth does not exist apart from language; language embodies and generates truth
Probabilistic truths – provide students with heuristics (techniques) for discovering it
Establishes legitimacy of rhetoric and comp as field of study—not remedial
Identifies three epistemological categories: objective, subjective, and transactional, that have dominated rhetorical theory and practice in the 20th C.
“epistemology rather than ideology because it gives a closer focus on the rhetorical properties as distinct from the social, economic or political properties of the systems considered” But does not neglect ideology.
Objective theories—behaviorist, semanticist, linguistic
Subjective theories “locate truth either within individual or real accessible only through individual’s internal apprehension. “have their roots in Platonic idealism modified by Emerson and Thoreau in 19th C. and encouraged by 20t C depth psychology.
Transactional theories “based in an epistemology that sees truth as a rising out of the interaction to the elements of the rhetorical situation.
There are classical, cognitive and epistemic rhetorics—he likes epistemic most.
The difference between competing rhetorics is real and has to do with epistemology—with assumptions about the very nature of the known, the knower, and the discourse community involved in considering the known.
These matters converge with elements of the rhetorical triangle: Reality, interlocutor, audience, and language
The nature of truth will determine the roles of interlocutor and audience in discovering and communicating it.
Says he is influenced by Burke
“Truth is not in the material or social realm, not out there, not in here. It emerges only as the three, the material, the social and the personal interact, and the agent of mediation is language”
Discusses rhetoric and poetic in English department as binary opposites. “ a given rhetoric always implies a corresponding poetic and a poetic a corresponding rhetoric.
Background of Writing Instruction
19th Century university sees a change in their student population
Old university was an elitist institution that prepared wealthy students for three major professions: law, medicine, clergy
New university was open to anybody who could meet the entrance requirements and prepared students for careers in other professions including: agriculture, education, social work, and journalism
the language of the university shifts to English from Greek and Latin
Harvard inaugurated the idea of an English placement exam because of the poor writing of their students
Writing Instruction 1900-1985 (Overview)
The Influence of Progressive Education 1920-1940
Grammar usage tests were used to determine a student’s placement
Two separate pleas to remove FYC during this period (both were denied because it was too obvious that students needed the writing courses)
Two major schools of the period were Current-Traditionalist and Humanistic
The Communication Emphasis: 1940-1960
expansion of the general education movement (begun after WWI
formation of CCCC
Focus in the classroom is either Linguistics and Writing or Literature and Writing (no rhetoric until late 1950s)
The Renaissance of Rhetoric: 1960-1975
Rhetoric emerges as a discipline in English departments
Major Rhetorical Approaches: 1960-1975
political activism has a significant impact on the rhetorics of education during this period
strong demand for relevance in the college curriculum
CCC sees an emphasis on the preparation of college English teachers through graduate programs more aligned with the undergraduate teaching pedagogies
Berlin – Rhetoric and Reality 1987
Theories Epistemological Forms of Twentieth Century Writing Instruction Rhetoric
Objectivist
based on positivistic epistemology (the real is located in the material world)
only that which can be proven is true
Dominant form of this method in Twentieth-Century rhetoric is the Current-Traditionalist approach
the modes of discourse with emphasis on exposition and the modes
Subjectivist
based on theories that locate truth within the individual or a realm only accessible to the individual (think Plato)
classroom methodology must focus on helping students learn that which cannot be taught
The instructor’s task is to create an environment where the student is free to explore and arrive at his own truth (think Elbow)
occurs through journaling, peer editing, and “the search for original metaphor”
journaling encourages the student to interpret the world in her own way
peer editing helps the student discover “what is inauthentic in their writing”
Transactional
truth arises through interaction with the elements of the rhetorical situation (subject/object/audience/language)
seen in twentieth-century writing classes as an emphasis on the cognitive, classical, and epistemic
Classical involves interaction between the writer and the audience/discourse community and views the truths as outside the rhetorical realm and are constantly up for debate.
Cognitive involves a psychological approach and the instructor must comprehend cognitive development to understand how to construct appropriate activities for the students level of cognition
Epistemic involves language entering into the transaction
Major Schools of Rhetoric
Current-Traditionalist
designed to provide middle-class professionals with writing tools to avoid embarrassment
created a rhetoric that denied the role of writer/reader/language in arriving at meaning
instruction involved students writing a theme for class each day (these were either descriptions of scenes around them, translations from Greek/Latin/French/German, summary of the lectures)
emphasis in the course was on grammar, usage, syntax, and paragraph structure
mode emphasis was on description, narration, and exposition (argument was omitted because it was considered too complex)
pedagogy was that practice was more valuable than reading in students’ writing improvement
students could be failed on their theme writing for any one minor grammar/style/usage error and a grade of E or F (on an ABCDEF paper) would fail them for the course
Liberal Culture
rival of the Current-Traditionalist
elitists who believed that instruction in the aims of rhetoric should only be continued for students who possessed genius, all others should be taught taste, appreciation, and self-contemplation of literature
for the non-geniuses, writing instruction should be taught at the high school level
courses took the belletristic approach and taught students to write about literature
writing was the “embodiment of spiritual vision, a manifestation of the true significance of the material world” and surface errors in writing emphasized a deeper problem in the student’s nature.
Transactional Rhetoric
reflects John Dewey’s notion that education should combine self-development, social harmony, and economic integration
reality as a social construction that emerges through dialectic
students have the right to use their own language and if this use is destroyed, the student is denied the experience of dialectic reality which, denies the reality of the individual
Berlin, James. Rhetoric and Reality: Writing Instruction in American Colleges, 1900-1985 (1987)
Berlin – Rhetoric and Reality 1987